POV

The Correction: 3 Marketing Shifts Nobody Planned For

By: Lavana Pauk

1. The AI trust collapse — and the one channel it can’t touch

Bots now account for 53% of all web traffic. Europol projects that by end of 2026, up to 90% of new online content could be AI-generated. When the internet is that saturated with synthetic content, people stop trusting what they see, even when they can’t explain why. Research found that simply labeling an ad as AI-generated is enough to lower purchase intent and willingness to buy. The ad didn’t change. Just the label. 

Brands are already reading the room. Dove has been calling out AI inauthenticity since 2024. In early 2026, Aerie, Equinox, and Almond Breeze all ran campaigns explicitly naming AI slop and not subtly. “Made by humans” is now a brand message. People are left wondering what is real? Can I trust it? Am I just a number in an algorithm?

Our POV: Physical channels have a built-in trust advantage that no content decision can manufacture. Direct mail is a good example.  It passes through real infrastructure, handled by real people, and arrives at a real address. That physical presence is credible in a way that digital now has to actively work to prove. In an environment where consumer trust in online content is eroding, the channels that were never synthetic to begin with have a quiet edge. That’s something worth building into the brief.

2. Too much performance focus is killing performance

The last decade of marketing had a clear direction: if you can measure it, fund it. Brand awareness budgets got treated as the soft spend. Performance got the money.

But now, ironically, a focus on performance is leading to worse performance. AI was supposed to accelerate easier production, more content, better targeting. What nobody saw coming was the blind spot: teams are producing three to five times more content than before, yet only 6% of B2B marketers say AI tools have significantly improved content performance. More output. Less impact.
Brands that flood the zone with content no one asked for, and build no equity along the way, will find the ads performing worse, the audience trusting less, and no brand underneath to fall back on.

Our POV: The brands investing in distinctive, memorable work right now, the kind that builds equity over time and not just clicks this quarter, are building something AI can’t replicate and performance spend alone can’t buy. It’s a real correction worth making…which leads us to our last point.

3. Safe creative is now the riskiest position in the room

When AI can produce polished, on-brand, perfectly consistent content at scale, polished and on-brand starts to read as something nobody made with care.

The brands cutting through right now all look like a human had to fight to get the idea approved. Surreal Cereal built a following by parodying LinkedIn conventions to sell cereal on LinkedIn. Liquid Death turned customer hate mail into a full death metal album. Graza launched its new glass bottles with a one-day surrealist installation: a Renaissance cherub statue dispensing olive oil, risotto served by disembodied hands through a wall. None of it follows a brand guide. All of it got remembered.
Weird is no longer a creative risk. It’s proof that a human was actually in the room.
The creative that gets waved through because it won’t offend anyone is increasingly the creative that gets ignored by everyone.

Our POV: In any channel, the brands willing to be a little uncomfortable right now are building the kind of recall that safe, optimized content can’t manufacture. Human creative bravery is increasingly a competitive advantage. Now is exactly the time to get comfortable with uncomfortable.

Final Thoughts
We expect brands willing to invest in work that is genuinely real, brave and distinctive are the ones that will be reward. The ones still chasing volume and safety will keep wondering why it isn’t working. Real beats generated. Brave beats bland. Brand beats volume.